Gang Members, Survivors Work toward Peace ; as Homicides Spike Upward, Members of a Boston Community Bridge a Chasm of Violence

Article excerpt

He is a former gang member, with bullet wounds for scars and a
criminal record that follows him wherever he goes.

She is a mother, whose son died in gang crossfire one winter
afternoon in 1993 as the 15-year-old headed to a party sponsored by
Teens Against Gang Violence.

"I used to want all people like him dead," Tina Chery says, her
gaze set on 27-year-old Mario Rodrigues. "I would have pulled the
trigger myself."

Instead, the two have begun working together - she with victims
of homicide, he with former and current gang members - to reduce
violence by generating dialogue and fostering self-esteem in the
community. "Now he is where I find hope," Ms. Chery says.

Their partnership, called the Unity Outreach Group, comes at a
time in Boston when the homicide rate is the highest it has been in
nearly a decade, with 63 murders reported this year. Police
attribute the spike, in part, to gang activity. And from proposing
tougher punishments against intimidation to securing more anticrime
resources, authorities here have scrambled to stem the wave of
violence.

But experts also see a key role for programs that focus on the
causes of violence and that enlist the community in healing itself.
Efforts such as Unity Outreach Group - part of a burgeoning
"restorative justice" movement across the country - may help end
cycles of gang violence where tougher punishments alone do not.

Some in the community may have trouble trusting the leadership of
offenders, yet they are in a unique position to reach out to their
peers and usher in change.

Mr. Rodrigues is, of course, not the first gang member to say,
"We have to stop the violence," says Jon Wilson, a victim-offender
dialogue facilitator in Maine who has worked with Chery. But his
reaching out to a one local resident, whose son was killed by gang
violence, is unique. "The bridging of those two human beings across
an almost indescribable divide is the heart of what I believe
restorative justice is," Mr. Wilson says. "It's that divide, that
huge chasm that is so profoundly important."

Growing up on tough streets

Gang activity in Boston was far more terrorizing a decade ago;
152 murders were recorded in 1990. Wednesday, authorities say the
groups, which span all ethnicities, are loosely organized by
geography - street blocks or housing projects - instead of by
hierarchy, like those in Los Angeles or Chicago. But violence here
has escalated in recent months. In Dorchester, which has seen much
of this year's violence, any number of memorials commemorate the
recently murdered.

Rodrigues grew up in Dorchester when the streets were tougher. As
a child Rodrigues, who came to the US from Cape Verde, was swarmed
by gangs who watched out for one other and their neighborhood. As a
child, he says, he fell asleep to the sound of shots in the night.
He officially joined a group at age 14.

But any sense of security began to wane as his gang dwindled -
from a band of 50 in the early 1990s to just a handful today - as a
result of jail sentences, murders, and deportations. And the broader
impact on the neighborhood - that people began to flee - didn't go
unnoticed by Rodrigues.

"You realize what you are doing," he says, his eyes steady. "You
realize people are afraid of us."

Bridging the divide

Last spring Rodrigues first approached Chery, whose Louis D.
Brown Peace Institute was named after her son. She tried to ignore
him. "I couldn't even take care of [my nonprofit], I did not want to
be affiliated with gangs," she thought back then, taking days to to
return his call.

But she finally did listen, and eventually came to realize that
their relationship was a missing piece of the dialogue in
Dorchester. …